Tales of the dental woes (part 2)

Since young, I have been conscious of the gap between my two front teeth. I remembered when I was like eight years old, I asked the dentist in my school, almost daily, to make it disappear. My mum had to be called down not to discuss braces or anything like that, but more towards ganging up against me to keep the gap. I was thinking how terrible my school dentist was to not want me to have pretty set of pearly whites! My mum, on the other hand, kept telling me I have teeth like Madonna and Janet Jackson. Thanks mum but no. I still wanted my gap gone!

I had many photos taken where I would smile without showing my teeth and my mum realising that started snapping candid or try to make me laugh in shots. I cringe at 'dem photos but my mum would pull out magazines showing me how celebrities have teeth like mine. I gave up after years of trying to convince the parental unit to allow me to have braces in.

As I get older, I realised my teeth are generally set wide apart. Are my gums too big or are my teeth too small? I got over that issue prolly when I turned 19 or something realising how easy it is to maintain. I have friends complaining about getting food stuck, decays, overlapping teeth, lips can't meet and so on. Guess I should be grateful for that. Thank you weird genes that came from no one! My mum's teeth were perfect and my dad's, not so much.

Acceptance aside, I got cocky that my teeth will never give me problems. I made dental appointments whenever I feel like it every half decade or so. Not an ideal habit but it has been repeatedly proven my teeth barely caused me any problems nor made any dentist unhappy to rethink their career choice.

You know how most of you will want to bang your head against the wall because of your wisdom tooth? Not me. I felt no pain, no discomfort. Despite the ass of 'dem tooth deciding to grow horizontally, I felt nothing. I had it checked only because I saw white bits protruding out from my gums and thinking that its C-A-N-C-E-R or something silly like that.

I needed surgeries. No fear and added bonus of getting five days off work, I made my appointment as soon as I possibly can. I remembered feeling normal until the dental assistants had me all prepped for surgery and I decided to cry. Why? Because apparently my eyes had to be covered so that I will not see any reflection of the surgery taking place but I had this nagging feeling that I will still peek!

The surgery went well and I even scheduled another surgery a year later, for the same reason to have five days off. As I am already familiar with the procedure, I actually held another patient's hand and consoled him until its his name got called. We met again after the operation and he gave me the 'ok' sign and his face was saying it was just as I had described.

I still have another two more wisdom teeth to remove. That's ten days off!

To be continued...